Steve Flowers: Negative ads work and always have
Over the years, many of you have lamented to me and said, “I am so tired of seeing all negative ads with candidates lambasting each other in political campaigns. Why don’t candidates say what they are going to do when they are elected rather than bashing their opponent mercilessly?” People also suggest that campaigns are more negative today than in bygone years. Allow me to answer the question in the reverse order. Criticizing and slandering your opponent is not new. It was actually more vicious and incendiary in earlier American political life and much more personal. First of all, there were no television cameras or hidden studios where third-party political ad gurus brewed disingenuous ads. Folks in the old days would have to meet their opponents face-to-face at political forums, rallies, and debates. They would trade barbs and insults right in the face of each other. In early American political history, there were instances of fisticuffs and even a duel where opponents were shot. Nothing was off limits, not even peoples’ wives and children. What they did to Andrew Jackson’s wife Rachel was so bad that it eventually caused the poor lady to withdraw and die from depression. At least today, it seems inappropriate and out of bounds to attack people’s family members. Also, in the old days, it seemed you could say things about your opponent without there being any semblance of truth to the accusations. Today, there are laws requiring that any attack on the opposition must have a semblance or scintilla of truth. Therefore, it was worse in past decades than today, if you can believe that. The main point asked why do these campaign media gurus use negative ads. It is a simple answer: they work. If they did not work, they would not use them. Polling reveals that negative ads change the trajectory and standing of candidates dramatically and instantaneously. There is a direct correlation to a candidate’s polling numbers before and after being hit by a negative ad. Much more so than a soft, pretty ad advocating that you vote for someone because they are a competent person who would be the ideal elected public servant. These gurus know this fact because today’s polling is very accurate, and they can read the polls, and they react and design ads based on polling. In Alabama political history the most brilliant and unquestionably accomplished politician was George C. Wallace. In Wallace’s early years of “politiken” for his first terms as governor, polling was in its infancy and was not as scientifically accurate. However, George Wallace was born to be a political genius and a political animal. He had a God-given ability to remember names and he knew what people wanted to hear. He inherently could read the political tea leaves. He did not need polling. I would visit often with Wallace in his last term. I was a freshman legislator and actually represented his home county of Barbour. He would call me down from the House floor to visit with him in the Governor’s office. He would reminisce about past political forays and governor’s races. He would tell me a lot of inside stories that I will probably never share. However, allow me to share this sage political admonition he imparted to me one day. He looked me squarely in the eyes and told me that more people vote against someone than for someone. He further elaborated, “You have got to find a boogeyman to run against.” He lived and breathed this belief and strategy. He ran on the race issue and segregation for decades. He rode that horse as long as he could. However, when Black Alabamians were given the right to vote in 1965 and soon after constituted 25% of the Democratic Primary electorate, Wallace instantly changed his stripes and went down Dexter Avenue to Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and had a conversion experience and begged forgiveness for exploiting the race issue. The Black voters forgave Wallace and elected him governor that last term in 1982. I never said Wallace was a statesman. He was a true, natural politician, and, yes, a demagogue. Whatever it took to get elected was Wallace’s modus operandi. These political gurus of today know the George Wallace adage of finding a boogeyman to run against remains true. In this upcoming election year, that is why you will see countless negative ads on television because they work. See you next week. Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in over 60 Alabama newspapers. He served 16 years in the state legislature. Steve may be reached at: www.steveflowers.us.
Gary Palmer urges college students to read history
On Monday evening Congressman Gary Palmer spoke to the University of Alabama College Republicans. In the meeting, Palmer advised the students to read books, particularly history. “I don’t think that history is required anymore,” Palmer said. “History is about telling stories.” Republicans won a small majority in the House of Representatives and failed to take control of the U.S. Senate in recent congressional midterm elections on November 8. “We did not do as well as would like,” Palmer said of the GOP House Caucus. Palmer said that his Republican colleagues did not win as many races as they should have because they did not do a good job at telling stories. “History is about telling stories,” Palmer continued. “The pages of history will reflect the decisions that you make. You are creating a life story. The decisions that you make will set the back story for the story that you are writing. Most of the time, when you think about history, you are thinking about battles and big events, but history is more than that.” “Smart people learn from their mistakes, but brilliant people learn from other people’s mistakes,” Palmer said. “When you are reading history, you are reading the story of people who made decisions.” Palmer said that inflation and the high cost of living are impacting Americans’ lives. “Inflation is basically driven by three things: monetary policy, energy policy, and regulatory cost,” Palmer explained. “Congress can address all three of these.” “We didn’t connect to people’s story,” Palmer continued. “We just said Joe Biden is a bad President, and Nancy Pelosi is a bad Speaker, and that is a bad message for Republicans.” “There is one indisputable fact that we have to accept,” Palmer said. “That we are going to occupy the same piece of dirt.” While the University of Alabama and many other schools no longer require that students take history (American or otherwise) for graduates to get a degree, Palmer said, “The number of students taking history as an elective has gone up.” While interest in history may be growing, Palmer questioned some of its accuracies. “Are you getting history that is honest?” Palmer said. “This punitive view of history that is directed at Europeans that Europeans came over here to dominate indigenous peoples. I am not going to argue that that was right. I am part Native American – Cherokee. When Andrew Jackson signed a treaty that the Cherokee would vacate the Eastern United States, part of that treaty is that they would have an at-large member of Congress. Not a voting member, but like we have with Puerto Rico, where they can’t vote, but they can in Committee. That has never been fulfilled.” “We have made some really bad mistakes,” Palmer said. “I keep pushing for you to read history. An enormous sacrifice was paid for your right to vote. You never had a country like this country until we came into being (with the ratification of the Constitution) in 1789. We were the only democracy of its type in the world. Now there is over a hundred.” Palmer said that he is not sure what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will bring to the floor in the lame-duck remaining weeks in the current Congress. Palmer was asked if he thought they would vote on extending daylight savings time, which passed the Senate months ago. “Probably not,” Palmer answered. “I know we have got to fund the government the week after next. It is appropriately scheduled for 8 days before Christmas.” Beginning in January, the new Congress will have the first Republican House majority in four years. “I am going to be addressing a lot more bills than I have had in the past that will be difficult for the Democrats to oppose, particularly on our fiscal issues,” Palmer said. The College Republicans of Alabama will meet on Tuesday to hold officer elections. Palmer represents Alabama’s Sixth Congressional District. To connect with the author of this story, or to comment, email brandonmreporter@gmail.com.
Will Sellers: In defense of the Electoral College
This article originally appeared in City Journal. I came of age politically with the 1968 presidential election. Alabama governor George Wallace was running as an independent against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. My parents were Nixon supporters, and I, their five-year-old son, hopped on the Nixon bandwagon with gusto. The dinnertime conversations in the month preceding the election were all about whether Wallace’s third-party candidacy could work. This all fascinated me, so I asked my mother to let me watch her vote on Election Day. She agreed, but to my dismay, when I joined her in the voting booth, I did not see Nixon, Humphrey, or Wallace listed on the ballot. This made no sense to me; I thought we were here to vote for Richard Nixon? My mother then explained that we didn’t vote for the presidential candidate directly. Instead, we voted for men and women called presidential electors. These people were well-regarded and appointed for the special privilege of casting the deciding votes in presidential elections. This system seemed out of place to me, because in every other election the candidates were listed by name on the ballot. Why not for president? Why should my mother vote for nine people, who would then vote later for president, instead of voting directly for the president? This was my first encounter with the Electoral College. It would not be my last. The first electoral college was a medieval construct dating back at least to the twelfth century, when specific princes were chosen to elect the Holy Roman Emperor. They were influential noblemen, who, because of the importance of their respective kingdoms, were given the hereditary title of “elector.” After the death of the emperor, they met, much like the College of Cardinals, to choose a successor. Whether this idea influenced the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention is speculation, but, like most of the other aspects of the Constitution, the mechanics of the new government were based on historical facets of self-government. The new American nation was built on traditions of representative government expressed in the English parliamentary system, the organization of Protestant church government, and the colonial experience with various local governments in the New World. Important questions necessarily arose during the Constitutional Convention concerning the process of electing the president. How exactly would a president be chosen, and to whom or what would he owe allegiance? Some advocated for election to take place in the House of Representatives, or in the Senate, or even in the several states. The obvious problem with these proposals is that they would create an axis between the president and the electing body. If the states elected the president, then the larger, wealthier, and more populous states would receive greater attention and more favorable treatment by the executive branch than would the smaller, less populous states. A similar imbalance of power would occur were the president chosen by the House or the Senate. Thus, the mechanics of electing the chief executive required balancing various interests to give the executive branch the requisite independence from other political bodies, while maintaining co-equality. According to the chosen scheme, each state would appoint “electors” based on the number of House and Senate members comprising the state’s congressional delegation. These electors were appointed for the sole purpose of electing the president, and a simple majority of their votes would decide the election. This created another means by which the spheres of Congress and the federal government were balanced and divided from that of the states. The Constitutional Convention viewed electors as not necessarily aligned with a faction, but as citizens of honesty, integrity, and political acumen. Originally, electors voted for two people; the person with the most electoral votes became president, and the runner-up became vice-president. Flaws in this system became evident with the presidential election of 1796, when John Adams was elected as president and his archrival, if not nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, was elected vice president. Four years later, Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number of electoral votes—neither had the required majority. This unworkable situation was remedied by the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, which prescribed that electors would separately vote for a president and vice president on the same ballot. Later, state legislatures, as they were constitutionally permitted and as the two-party system grew, allowed electors to run as proxies for the presidential and vice-presidential party nominee. For at least the first 100 years, the system worked well, and, other than the 12th Amendment, no major attempts were made to alter the process of electing the president and vice president. Several times, the election was submitted to the House of Representatives after the electors failed to achieve a majority vote for president. For example, in 1824, the election was submitted to the House, where power plays resulted in the election of John Quincy Adams, though Andrew Jackson won significantly more of the popular and the electoral vote. Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, lost the 1876 popular vote to Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, but became president because he had prevailed in the electoral vote, though voter fraud in some jurisdictions seemed certain. Many Democratic candidates running for federal office embraced the idea of abolishing the Electoral College, not least Sam Rayburn, who, in his first congressional election in 1912, advocated electing the president by popular vote. If there was any momentum for this aspect of the Progressive movement, it lost steam as other, more critical issues advanced. Today, the constitutional method for electing the president is under siege. The result of the 2016 election—with Donald Trump winning the presidency despite losing the popular vote—led pundits and politicians to call for the presidential election to be based on the popular, not electoral, vote. But lamenting results that saw two presidents in recent memory fail to win the popular vote obscures the effect that abolishing the Electoral College would have on a national campaign. A presidential campaign aimed at achieving a popular vote majority would completely ignore
Martin Dyckman: It’s always about the money
The Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote a powerful case for Donald Trump‘s impeachment, in the style of an open letter to the “Dear Republicans in Congress,” that I was reading to my wife as she prepared breakfast the other morning. At the part where Pitts asked, “Have you no loyalties deeper than party?” Ivy broke in. “The money,” she exclaimed. That nailed it. It is always about the money. It’s about the campaign money they expect to continue bagging from the Kochs and other oligarchs who embrace the Trump agenda even as they despise the man. It’s about the money, the great gobs of money that would befall the wealthier classes, the true constituency for most of them, from the sort of tax “reform” they are counting on Trump to sign. It’s about the money they would gain for themselves from the Trump tax scheme. While the outlines he proposed are strikingly thin, they are enough to show that Congress members themselves would make out better than bank robbers. The middle class and poor would get essentially nothing. The foregone revenue would take America back to where the oligarchs want it — a sociopolitical stone age, with the new robber barons doing what they want and getting what they want, with only minimal interference, if any, from taxes, regulations or labor unions. The Congress does not simply represent the Republican Party’s true constituency. It is part of it. The most recent available figures estimated the average Congressional net worth at around $1 million. To be one of the richest 50 members required a minimum of $7.28 million in net worth. Of those 50, 32 were Republicans. There are Democrats, no doubt, who would vote for the outrageous Trump tax scheme if they thought their voters would forgive them. Most of the Republicans act as if they don’t have that particular worry. For the Democrats and the few Republicans who do care to put their country first, the question may well be whether it would be best to be rid of the guttersnipe in the White House sooner or later. From an exclusively partisan standpoint, it would suit the Democrats to have him still twisting in the ill winds of own making as the 2018 midterm elections approach. This would be better for policy as well, since every Republican Congress member who isn’t totally insulated by gerrymandering would have to worry about casting his or her vote with the extremely unpopular president. And the fact that Trump still refuses to release his tax returns, despite all the promises, raises profound suspicions about any tax legislation bearing his label. If Trump were dethroned now, whether by his Cabinet or by a late-awakening congressional conscience, the Democrats would be confronting in President Mike Pence someone who has a long-standing and genuine commitment to all the hideously anti-social policies that Trump never shared until he saw them as keys to the Republican nomination. Lacking Trump’s offensive personality, Pence could take America backward even faster and farther than Trump. The more important issues, though, are the clear and present danger of keeping an uneducated, uneducable and wildly impetuous man-child in proximity to the nuclear codes, the forfeiting of American influence and prestige for which he is responsible, and the disgust that sickens most of us with every new disclosure of his abuses of power and of the foreign influences in his campaign. Whatever happens in the short term, both political parties should be planning how to never again nominate someone so singularly unfit and dangerous as Trump. The electoral system was supposed to prevent that — “a moral certainty,” as Alexander Hamilton put it, “that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” When Hamilton wrote “seldom,” he was not thinking “forever.” But the Founders provided for a day when their precautions would fail. At the outset, the party factions in Congress caucused to nominate their candidates for president. There was never a doubt as to their qualifications. No outsider cracked the system until Andrew Jackson came along, and he was much like Trump, who admires him, in being ill-informed, reckless and ruthless. Congress, for all its enormous faults, could be an inherently better judge of presidential timber than the present primary election system. But to try to give Congress control of who runs would be a fool’s errand, not to mention unwise. What Congress should do — what it must do — is to accept the constitutional responsibility the Founders assigned to it in the event of a rogue presidency. It is the fail-safe they wrote into the Constitution. As Pitts described it to the Republicans, “Your course of action, if you have even a molecule of courage, integrity or country love, should be obvious. Impeach him now.” ___ Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the Tampa Bay Times. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
Darryl Paulson: Obama’s electoral legacy: After 8 years, we get a Donald Trump
(Part 2 of the Obama legacy) With the inauguration of Donald Trump, it is a good time to review the electoral impact of eight years of the Obama White House. One of the impacts is the election of Trump which surprised the entire political universe. Whatever Obama may have achieved in public policy, it is that policy which is in great part responsible for setting “the post-World War II record for losses by the White House party,” according to Larry Sabato. Democrats lost over 1,000 seats at the state and national level. However important the Obama policies may have been, it is fair to argue that those policies contained the seeds of Democratic losses. The Wall Street and big bank bailouts led to the creation of the Tea Party. The Tea Party became a primary vehicle to organize disaffected Republicans against bailouts for Wall Street and not Main Street. Combined with opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), mobilized Republicans took over control of both the House and Senate, and effectively denying Obama the needed votes to carry out the rest of his agenda. After the 2016 election, Democrats held 11 fewer Senate seats than they did Jan. 20, 2009, a 16 percent decrease. Democrats hold 62 fewer House seats than in 2009, a drop of 24 percent. They also lost control of the White House giving Republicans complete control of the national government. At the state level, the number of Democrat governors fell from 28 to 16, a 43 percent decline. In 2009, Democrats controlled both houses in 27 states; after 2016, the number dropped to dual control of only 14 states, a 48 percent drop. On top of this, Democrats lost 959 seats in the state legislatures, weakening them for years to come. These losses mean that Democrats will have a difficult time in passing their agenda at the state and national level. It also means that the Democratic bench of future leaders has been wiped out, making it difficult for them to find and finance competitive candidates. Finally, since Democrats foolishly changed the filibuster rules in 2013, cabinet nominees and most court appointees will need only 51 votes to be confirmed. This creates the possibility for more extreme nominees to win confirmation. One of the few positive thing for Democrats is that it is difficult to imagine them losing many more seats. The out-party normally makes gains in midterm elections. Unfortunately for Democrats, they must defend 25 of the 33 Senate seats up for election in 2018, and Trump won 10 of the 25 states that Democrats must defend. If the Democrats could pick up only two Senate seats in 2016 when Republicans had to defend 24 of the 34 seats, it is hard to imagine them doing better in 2018 when they must defend two out of every three Senate seats up for election. Without Obama on the ballot in 2016 and 2018, fewer young and minority voters will turn out at the polls. Although Democrats have dominated among young voters, few of them turn out, especially in off-year elections. Democrats have complicated their problem with young voters by having an array of senior citizen leaders. Nancy Pelosi has been the ranking Democratic leader for 6 terms, as has second-ranking Democrat Steny Hoyer. Third-ranking Democrat James Clyburn has served five terms as leader. Pelosi is 76, and Hoyer and Clyburn are 77. Although Democrats have been devastated during Obama’s tenure, he is not solely responsible. Obama is only the third Democratic president to twice win a popular vote majority, along with Andrew Jackson and Franklin Roosevelt. Democratic National Party Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Congresswomen from Florida, was widely viewed as an ineffective spokesperson for the party and was eventually ousted for what many Democrats viewed as her favoritism for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primaries. Obama appointed Wasserman Schultz to become chair of the Democratic Party and, critics contend, for standing by her for far too long. Politics is a strange beast. Six months ago, almost everyone believed the Republican Party was on its last legs, and the Trump nomination would doom them forever. Today the Republicans control all three branches of the federal government, and it appears that the Democrats are on life support. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? ••• Darryl Paulson is Emeritus Professor of Government at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Jac VerSteeg: Put Donald Trump on a counterfeit bill
They did it to Andrew Jackson. They did it to John Wayne. They did it to John U. Lloyd. Who? John U. Lloyd is not usually mentioned in the same breath as great presidents and iconic movie stars. Lloyd is merely a public servant whose name graces a state park in Broward County, Florida. Make that “graced,” past tense. Gov. Rick Scott recently signed a bill removing John U. Lloyd’s name from the beach park and renaming it in honor of Von D. Mizell and Eula Johnson. Mizell and Johnson led the “wade-ins” that led to the desegregation of whites-only beaches in Broward County. Lloyd, who died in 1975, was the longtime county attorney who helped amass the oceanfront land that became the park that until recently bore his name. That same land at one time was called “the colored beach.” But that’s not all Lloyd did. As the county attorney, he participated in the county’s failed effort to keep the beaches segregated. As the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported, the renaming was slightly botched by the failure to tell Lloyd’s widow that the honor was being revoked in favor of the two civil rights activists. Terry Lloyd Kettering found out when she read an account of the renaming in the newspaper. She was shocked and saddened. She will have to take solace in the fact that her deceased husband now is in such august company as Jackson and Wayne. Because the renamings and revisions are only just getting started. I applaud the changes for two main reasons. The debates are instructive. And the changes are marks of progress. As marks of progress, they give me hope in these days of regressionists like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, (aka Lucifer in the Flesh.) President Jackson, who held horrible views on blacks and Native Americans, is being kicked off the front of the $20 bill in favor of Harriet Tubman, the courageous abolitionist. The California state Assembly just defeated a resolution that would have declared May 26 as John Wayne Day. The Duke’s open disparagement of blacks and Native Americans as well as his support for the Cold-War era witch hunts by the House Un-American Activities Committee were too much for California lawmakers to swallow. More renamings, revisions and replacements are coming – perhaps they’ll even get around to renaming the John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif. Charlottesville, Va., is appointing a community board to grapple with the prospect of moving its famous equestrian statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson from the city’s downtown parks. My alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill, recently renamed Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall, removing the name of William Saunders, reputedly a Ku Klux Klan founder. Princeton University refused to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from its School of Public Policy and International Affairs – Wilson was president of the university before he was president of the United States – but Princeton pledged efforts to admit more minorities to the program and to put Wilson’s racist views in support of segregation “into context.” “Context” is good. It’s the mitigating approach of choice among historians maintaining the legacies and reputations of figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both slaveholders. People who held the prevailing views of their time should not be judged solely by evolved modern views. They could be good people in other parts of their lives; debates about figures now in disgrace should illuminate that fact and the complexity of historical bigotry. But neither can now-offensive views be excused away by simply referring to them as “our heritage.” The Confederate Flag might be “heritage,” but proudly displaying it today makes it a disgraceful heritage. The tide of support for Donald Trump contains a strong and odious element of resistance to inclusive views on race, ethnicity and gender. It is the opposite of the movement toward progressive views on race. Trump’s pledge is to “Make America Great Again.” But there are great Americans who were great because they recognized that America was not so great for some classes of people. Trump’s reactionary pledge is to Make America Great Again for angry white males. I’ve never understood why members of this group – poorly educated and slipping economically – put their trust in a silver-spoon billionaire spewing empty promises. Perhaps it is because there is a deeply racist and misogynistic element in Trump’s pitch. He’ll make Mexico build a wall to keep its rapists out. He cheers on supporters roughing up black protesters. He is crass and demeaning toward women. Trump’s counterfeit vision is of an America that is “great again” for the beneficiaries of bigotry. Progress demands that we instead turn to those striving to make America great for everyone. ••• Jac Wilder VerSteeg is a columnist for The South Florida Sun Sentinel, former deputy editorial page editor for The Palm Beach Post and former editor of Context Florida.
Darryl Paulson: Voters don’t understand or like the Electoral College
Here are a few basic facts about the electoral-college system. First, very few voters understand how it works. Second, most voters hate the system. Third, the system is almost impossible to change. Those who drafted the Constitution had little trust in democracy. James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, wrote that unfettered majorities tend toward “tyranny.” John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and second President, noted that “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Reflecting their distrust of democracy, the drafters of the Constitution wanted to create a process where the president would be indirectly selected. Direct election was rejected because they believed that most voters were incapable of making a wise choice. Voters would likely vote for a well-known person, especially one from a voter’s home state. A Committee of Eleven was appointed and they recommended a compromise where each state would appoint presidential electors equal to the number of representatives and senators. The electors would cast a vote for president and vice president. The candidate with the most votes would be president and the candidate with the second highest vote would be vice president. The compromise was accepted and Alexander Hamilton described the electoral-college plan “if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.” The compromise worked until the 1800 presidential election when electors cast an equal number of votes for Thomas Jefferson, who the Anti-Federalists wanted to be president and Aaron Burr, who they wanted as vice president. After 36 ballots, the House selected Jefferson as president. The 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804, separated the electoral vote for president and vice president. There is little doubt that Americans hate the Electoral College system and prefer the direct election of the president. The system has allowed the election of four presidents who lost the popular vote, but won the electoral vote. In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote, but lost when the House selected John Quincy Adams. In 1876, Samuel Tilden won the popular vote by a quarter million votes, but lost the electoral vote to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1888, Grover Cleveland received more popular votes but lost to Republican Benjamin Harrison. Finally, in 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the election when Florida’s electoral votes were awarded to George W. Bush. Another complaint about the electoral college is that the winner-take-all feature does not reflect the popular will. A candidate with a plurality of the popular vote would win all of a state’s electoral votes in a three or four person race. Critics contend that the system discourages candidates from campaigning in states that they are sure to win or lose. No sense wasting time and money campaigning in those states. Instead, all of the attention is focused on a half-dozen competitive states like Florida and Ohio. If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes (270), the election is thrown into the House of Representatives. Each state, regardless of population, gets one vote. The least populated state has one vote; the most populated state gets one vote. If a state delegation’s vote is equally split, they get no vote until the deadlock is broken. Although reforms of the system have been pushed, the likelihood of reform is small. Small states, which have disproportionate power under the plan, are not likely to give up that power to support direct election. Supporters of direct election argue that it is the most democratic, which is precisely why the drafters of the Constitution dismissed it. Supporters also argue that it would force candidates to conduct national campaigns since every vote would matter. Critics of direct election argue that it would create gridlock in close elections. Imagine having to review over 100 million votes in a close election to see if they should be counted or dismissed. Would voters have confidence if a candidate won by a few thousand votes? What does the electoral-college system tell us about 2016. Hillary Clinton is a flawed candidate seeking a third consecutive win for Democrats, something that is difficult to do. However, we know that Republicans are not happy with either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. The possibility of a contested convention further muddies Republican chances. A look at the electoral-college maps shows that Democrats usually win fewer states than Republicans, but they win the states with large numbers of electoral votes. While the electoral-college map of America looks overwhelmingly red, it is likely the Republicans will end up feeling blue. Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia, projects that in a Clinton-Trump election, Clinton is likely to win 347 electoral votes to Trump’s 191. If so, an easy Clinton victory means there will be no pressure to reform the electoral-college system. *** Darryl Paulson is Professor Emeritus of Government at USF St. Petersburg.
Martin Dyckman: Smart Republicans need to start thinking, acting on their own
In 1789, as the new United States of America was just taking root, Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that “If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.” The quotation is making one of its frequent rounds on the Internet. The remark was ironic, if not to say hypocritical, considering Jefferson’s subsequent energetic role in organizing the anti-Federalist movement into what he called the Democratic-Republican Party. Present-day Democrats claim him and Andrew Jackson as co-founders. But the full context — rarely quoted — of what he wrote makes great sense now as a trenchant description of how the party system has gone off the cliff. “I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything where I was capable of thinking for myself,” Jefferson explained. “Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven…” Party discipline, the plague that Jefferson deplored, gives us a U.S. Senate whose majority party leader refuses even to permit the body to consider fulfilling its constitutional duty to approve or reject a president’s nominee to fill a vacancy on the nation’s highest court. Moreover, in rationalizing why he would not allow it even in a post-election session should there be a Democratic president-elect, Mitch McConnell had this to say: “I can’t imagine that a Republican majority Congress in a lame duck session after the American people have spoken would want to confirm a nominee opposed by the NRA, the NFIB, and the New York Times says he would move the court dramatically to the left. This nomination ought to be made by the next president.” What he really was saying is this: Even if the next president is a Democrat, and even if the Republicans lose their Senate majority, they’ll fight hard, they’ll fight long, they’ll fight dirty, and they’ll filibuster to keep anybody opposed by the likes of the gun lobby and the National Federation of Independent Business from replacing Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court. He neglected to mention the Koch brothers. One of their front organizations declared war on any Barack Obama nominee even before he selected one. Now I cannot find in the Constitution — nor can McConnell — anything that says a president’s second term is for only three years rather than four. Or anything to say that lobbies unelected by the people or billionaires whose father was a John Bircher have veto power over what used to call itself the “greatest deliberative body in the world.” Nor is anything to be found in the New York Times online files where the newspaper ever asserted that Merrick Garland‘s confirmation would “move the court dramatically to the left.” What the paper did say, in an article describing Garland as essentially a centrist, was this: “Conservative groups, who said Judge Garland would move the court sharply to the left, raised questions about his commitment to gun rights, although they based their objection on fairly thin evidence.” (Emphasis supplied) McConnell can’t even get his sources right, let alone his constitutional duty. (For the record, the NRA’s objection to Garland appears to owe entirely to his vote in one case: the challenge to the District of Columbia’s strict firearms law. After a panel of three other judges voted 2-1 to overturn it, Garland voted in the minority that the entire court should rehear the case. Such a procedural vote does not necessarily predict how he would vote on the merits. The case went directly to the Supreme Court instead, where Scalia wrote the opinion in a 5-4 decision rejecting the law — and a century’s worth of precedents — by finding an individual constitutional right to own firearms.) The Republican Senate’s pathetic submission to McConnell and the right-wing lobbies is reason enough for voters to elect a Democratic majority. And now that Marco Rubio has returned to his Senate duties, owing his party nothing, it would be a good time for him to join the handful of other Republican senators who have said they would be willing to give Garland the hearing that he — and the American people — deserve. This isn’t to suggest that the Democrats are virginal on the question of senseless party discipline. At their 1992 convention in New York, they infamously kept Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey off the speaker’s rostrum because he wanted to say how it was possible to be both liberal and opposed to abortion. But not since Robert Bork‘s nomination in 1987 have the Democrats defeated a Republican President’s Supreme Court nominee. Even in Bork’s case, two Democrats defected in his favor despite the prevailing view that he was an extremist. Six Republicans voted no. The majority party also gave him the floor vote he demanded despite the Judiciary Committee’s disfavor. The nation will need Republicans to break ranks en masse in the eventuality that the uncouth, erratic, self-centered and dangerously demagogic Donald Trump becomes their nominee for president. Already, such hack party figures as Florida Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi are crawling aboard the perceived victor’s bandwagon for whatever favors a President Trump might bestow. Republicans who truly respect their party, on the other hand, will not want a chronically dishonest racist with no coherent policy proposals to symbolize the party of Abraham Lincoln to the nation and to the world. One Nixon was enough, and he was a gentleman compared to Trump. Some Republicans oppose Trump because he has strayed from their ideologies in the past, others because they fear they couldn’t control him, and others because he simply disgusts them. That last reason is the compelling one. As another Republican president, Rutherford B. Hayes, said at his inaugural, “He serves his party best who serves his country best.” *** Martin Dyckman is a retired associate editor of the St. Petersburg
